


Sister, How You Broke Me

by prestissimo



Series: Lost Entries from the Daily Ledger of Nicolas de Lenfent [6]
Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Abuse, Captivity, Epistolary, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Psychological Torture, Sarcasm, Synesthesia, Torture, Unreliable Narrator, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 01:07:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19262887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prestissimo/pseuds/prestissimo
Summary: Eleni asks Nicolas to write a reflection for her.





	Sister, How You Broke Me

Ah,  _ma belle soeur,_  now that you know my secret, I petition you reflect upon what that meant for me beneath the crypts of Les Innocents. Constantly do you pursue me for details of how they  _broke_ me, begging my forgiveness for reawakening old wounds if only so that you might deduce how to  _fix_  me somehow. I implore you to reconsider what you do by asking me to explain. I will not be able to write much at a time, for even now I already know it will be a more difficult endeavor than I can imagine.

I remember…wood. It smelled like an achromatic  _chaconne_ , and from the moment I awoke from my swoon I heard the screaming from the entombed vampires around me. It was  _ ~~excruciating~~   ~~horrific~~_   ~~agony~~ …I remember thinking it was  _stunning_. Such novel sounds were the roars and cries of madness to me then! The sounds of a mind turned inwards towards itself, consuming every edifice and structural beam to end its pain. Our dear maestro, that ancient catamite who protects us from ourselves, has given me an excellent survey course upon the matter. After all, once he had seen the results of the preview class, he had to have his best pupil under his nurturing wing.

My hands were swollen and bruised, and I was certain some of the fingers had been broken. A hot flash and shudder accompanies each time I recall one of the creatures biting down on my outstretched palm, gnawing on them to try to separate my digits at the first knuckle. I was already coughing blood by the time the bars of the cage knocked against my bones. One of them would pass by beneath me occasionally, squeeze my cheeks, and milk my mouth of the blood I had not spit out already. 

I was so far from resisting that I could barely muster a twitch away from their searching, grabbing hands. They squeezed me this way and that, licking at my toes before biting into the thin skin between them, drawing an agonized groan. One hard hand palmed me through my torn breeches and, mercifully, turned me over to sink fangs into my buttocks. No part of my clothing was spared their inspection as they shoved aside fabric to bite or pinch or beat the flesh below. By far the most popular choice was to yank my arms and legs backwards through the cage to the waiting vampires below, and laugh as I jerked and screamed while they fed simultaneously from each limb. 

After awhile, I  _begged_ to join the ones entombed in the earthen walls, the ones who screamed secrets to me and whose song had become a sick infected twist of itself, without tempo or key or arrangement. I was dissolving into the barest shimmer of a person, and I wanted to be with them rather than alone before that time came. But even that was denied me.

At one point, they had forgone from feeding me enough that I could muster strength to shove myself sitting up. The cage was just tall enough for me to barely slump myself against the bars and stare out at the darkness with dull eyes. 

“Look, it thinks it can escape!” Someone hissed. The panic shot through me at the thought of drawing their attention again, and I stifled my moan of fear.

“Do you think we should help it? It’s damned!” Someone else hissed.

“Shut up,” I wanted to cry at them, but my parched throat would not obey. My lips were bleeding and I had scarce the energy to breathe as it was.

“We should alert them!”

“Leave the poor thing alone. He’ll be with us soon.”

“That or a rotting corpse at the bottom of a well. Good enough to poison pious mortals.”

On it went as my neighbors spoke of doom and damnation, of how pathetic mortals were and how I was the saddest of the lot. And beneath their words and screams and mocking laughter, I could hear their sick songs trying to find the tempo again. I could hear it in myself when I’d never heard my own song before, and it was weaving its way into my soul while I lay inside the cage, dying. I beg your leave. Hearing the songs again is interfering with my recollection, and I ask that we continue another time. I remain, as I only can, your devoted

Nicolas.


End file.
